Sela
Commander Sela was a Romulan-Human hybrid; her mother was Lieutenant Natasha Yar of the from an alternate timeline, while her father was a Romulan general. Events leading to birth In the year 2344, while in the middle of a battle with four Romulan Warbirds, the traveled through a temporal rift to the year 2366. This had the effect of creating an alternate timeline, wherein the Federation was at war with the Klingon Empire, and Tasha Yar had not died at Vagra II. Emerging from the rift, the Enterprise-C encountered it's successor, the . Through Guinan, the Enterprise-D crew learned that, in order for the timeline to be restored, the Enterprise-C must return through the rift, even though doing so would almost certainly mean their deaths. Learning from Guinan that, in the other timeline, she had died a meaningless death, Tasha requested and was granted a transfer to the Enterprise-C, which returned through the rift and resumed the battle with the Romulans. ( ) Early life While the Enterprise-C was destroyed, several crewmembers survived and were taken prisoner by the Romulans, Tasha among them. After being interrogated, all of the survivors were to be executed, but a Romulan general became enamored of Tasha, and offered to spare the lives of the prisoners if she became his consort, a condition to which Tasha agreed. One year later, she gave birth to a daughter, Sela. When Sela was four years old, Tasha took her and attempted to escape, but sensing that her mother was attempting to take her away from her home and her father, Sela cried out, and Tasha was discovered and subsequently executed. ( ) Military career Over the next fifteen years, Sela rose through the ranks of the Romulan military, acheiving the rank of commander. In that capacity, she was a major player in plots to disrupt the alliance between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, one of which involved kidnapping Starfleet officer Geordi La Forge, and brainwashing him to kill Klingon governor Vagh. She was also involved in lending support to the Duras sisters in their attempt to gain control of the Klingon Empire, ferrying them materials and supplies in cloaked Romulan vessels. Sela was foiled, however, when Captain Jean-Luc Picard instituted a tachyon detection grid at the Klingon-Romulan border, making it impossible for any cloaked ship to cross the border undetected. ( ) Sela was encountered again in 2368, when she masterminded a plot to invade Vulcan, exploiting Ambassador Spock's underground reunification movement on Romulus. Using three stolen Vulcan ships carrying a Romulan invasion force, she attempted to use Spock to convince the Federation that a peace envoy was en route to Vulcan. Spock refused, however, and, working together with Captain Picard and Lieutenant Commander Data, he was able to foil Sela's plan and warn the Federation. ( ) Appendices Background Sela was devised and portrayed by Denise Crosby. In devising the role, Crosby stated, "the part of Sela sort of came about from me sitting around in my house one day thinking about how much fun it was for me to go back and do , and it was so much fun that I thought what else can I do? I thought it was pretty well established that Lt. Yar and Lt. Castillo on "Yesterday's Enterprise" had something going so perhaps they had a child or Yar was pregnant when she went back into the past to fight her final battle. And I sort of thought it out and it seemed to really make sense, and there were no flaws." "So my original intention was that Lt. Yar would have a daughter that was raised by Romulans and would grow up to try to actually be a Romulan. So I brought this up and the producers really liked the idea and they sort of toyed with it for a while. A few months went by and I got a call and they said we like your idea but we just can't make sense of that Lt. Yar got pregnant by Castillo. We'll have it so that Yar was captured, they didn't all die in the battle, the ship was captured and she was taken by a Romulan general." (Trek: The Next Generation Crew Book) In her first appearance in the episode , Crosby only lent her voice to this character although uncredited. Actress Debra Dilley appeared as the photo double standing in the shadows. In , Cameron served as hand double for Crosby's character. Sela has the distinction of being the first (and only) blonde Romulan seen in Star Trek. Though Sela states how Tasha, her mother, died when she was four for trying to escape, Picard is completely unconvinced that her story is true, and insists it won't affect his judgment in any way. Sela's story is supported by Guinan, who retains memories from the alternate timeline shown in . Apocrypha Sela returned to plague Captain Jean-Luc Picard and company several more times in the Star Trek novels, notably in Peter David's books Triangle: Imzadi II, in which she attempted to trick Thomas Riker into releasing a nanovirus that would destroy the entire Klingon population on their homeworld; the plan was thwarted by the intervention of William T. Riker, Worf and Odo. Another notable return was in book five of the Double Helix series Double or Nothing. In the book The Romulan Stratagem, Sela forms an alliance with Data to uncover the truth about a series of disastrous events that cast suspicion on both the Romulans and the Federation. Sela also appeared, with the rank of admiral, in the computer game Star Trek: Armada. Further, in the comic book miniseries The Killing Shadows by Scott Ciencin and Andrew Currie, Sela resurfaces as an exile from Romulus, serving alongside Picard on the planet Nydaris in common cause against a race of ninja-like assassins called the Bodai Shin. In Star Trek Online, Sela survived the supernova of 2387 that eliminated of many of her opponents and cleared the way for her rise to Empress of the Romulan Star Empire before she was exiled for attempting to assassinate the head of the Tal Shiar. External link * de:Sela es:Sela Category:Hybrids Category:Humans Category:Romulans Category:Romulan military personnel